From Butterflies to Hurricanes, and everything in between.

Well, as previously explained, I’ve always known that I had issues opening up. Once again not out of lack of trust, but simply because there words never seemed to make sense when they departed from my lips.

I’ve decided to try to change that. To open up, let the words flow, and try to hope they’re received correctly. I was pretty apprehensive about the thought of expressing my every thought and emotion at the mere beckon of them, but I did my best to stick through it. It’s been limited to one person, but I’ve done it.

It… hasn’t gone as easy as expected.

I’m even more apprehensive now. Expressing my every thought on request (and sometimes without request) is somewhat troubling, to say the least. Thoughts run through my mind often after speaking out. “Did that come out right? Was that offensive? Did that make sense? Will they understand?” All this and more from simple sentences.

What may be the worst part about it, however, is that it appears I can’t stop. As much as it makes me uncomfortable (anywhere from minimally to moderately) I can’t stop completely expressing everything to them. It’s not to say they’ll take these thoughts & intentions and flip them on me with ill-will, this is just a level of vulnerability I don’t believe I’ve ever felt before. It’s a small, aching, vulnerability that gnaws at the back of my mind occasionally, knowing this could potentially backfire in unforeseeable ways. However, I can’t bring myself to stop laying my cards on the table.

Well, assuming you’ve loosely been following this blog, you know a few months ago I agreed to run a half marathon in October with my friend. Unfortunately, after the last update I stopped running. Not due to laziness or giving up, but rather to injury.

The last update, I was very pleased with the mileage I had been putting on, and was very optimistic to the future. Shortly after the last run I mentioned in the pervious post, I began having knee pain.
Not “while running” knee pain, but intense general knee pain. If I drove for 20 minutes or more, my knee would start throbbing. Just simply existing brought knee pain, and it only got worse when I moved it. Everything I looked into pointed to an overuse injury; “too much too fast”. I was pretty bummed out, because I really wanted to run the half. I took about a month and a half off for recovery, because it just never stopped hurting.

I’ve recently started running again (~beginning of August) and have been increasing my mileage, even logging a 5 mile run.
Surprisingly (and happily) I’ve had no injuries. My knee doesn’t hurt before, during, or after my runs, I just get exercise fatigue.
That being said, even though I know I won’t be able to run the half marathon that weekend, I’m going to go for the 10k that weekend. That seems a lot more ascertainable, so hopefully everything goes well.

To say “I’m ok” right now would be a blatant lie. Unfortunately, I’ve lied a lot lately.
But I never could completely open up to people. Friends, family, lovers, I never knew how to properly express how I felt, so I never did. I’d mention some of what’s on my mind. Try to give a little insight, but I never knew how to let it all out. I don’t know why either.

Maybe I don’t want to be judged, maybe I’m afraid to let it all on the table, but I’ve always simply told myself I’d never be able to properly get my view across, so don’t try. I’d like to, but even having both sides of the conversation in my head, nothing makes sense. So if I can’t explain to myself how I feel, how could I possibly try to let someone else know? I would never want my views misconstrued in translation, because I don’t want the wrong points to come across.

It’s not to say I don’t trust those around me. I do. I just don’t trust myself.

The past few days, I’ve spent my time focusing on my flaws and improving myself (cleaning my room, cleaning my car, going to the gym more, etc.). As I sit here at work, I realize I may have completely missed one of my biggest issues; misguided, irrational anger.

So, the title. Why “K”? It represents one of the messages I hate to get most in the world; “k”.

Have you been there? In an argument with someone, and they simply reply with “k”? Did you feel hurt? Angry? Feel as if they’ve discarded you and (whatever the situation may be) to the side?

I did. But here’s a better question; why? Why do you feel this way about a single letter? Why so much rage at receiving a short, quick response?

That’s what I asked myself.

See, I’m notorious for getting angry whenever someone “k’d (pronounced; ‘KAY-ed’) me”. If it was an argument, it was now much more of an argument. If it was a response due to your emotional exhaustion, mine had been rekindled like a phoenix at birth. In my previous relationship, this angered me to no end. And she knew. But she didn’t do it out of anger or spite or with any malice at all. It was simply a default response. A quick button-press and a “send” key a way. A simple, single, letter.

There was no way I could ever even attempt to reason it that way. If that response came my way, I would then either become angry or just not reply, while silently cursing the day that became an accepted response to any message, ever.

But I sit here, and can almost chuckle at my past mistakes. “Ha! So much anger over a simple word? Not even a full word, just a letter! How irrational.” Looking back on it, I was mad at the letter. I was mad at everything the letter represented. Lack of interest. Lack of concern. Lack of feeling. Sadness. Anger.

I was angry that this letter dared to define anger (or any emotion, for the matter) in such a short, easily identifiable manner. I knew the only time she really put ‘k’ was when she was sad or upset with me. But I was angry. I was angry she dared to use a letter she knew upset me. There would be no tending to her emotion, for mine had already taken control of me. It was my turn to be upset. There would be no attempts to resolve the issue that caused the ‘k’ in the first place, we were far past that part of the conversation with just 1 letter.

I now no longer hate the letter, but rather, I hate my actions. I hate the childish, selfishness that reared it’s ugly head whenever I was presented with that word. I hate how I felt entitled to feeling wronged whenever I faced that phrase. I hate how I ignored the feelings of those important to me in a brazen display of emotion. But no more. No more will I bound myself to a letter. No more will I be trapped by a solitary character on a digital screen.

No more will I allow emotion to over flow in misguided, irrational anger.

Well, about a month ago, I agreed to run a half marathon in October.
A month ago, I said I’d start running actively to build up my mileage.
A lot of time has passed in that month, with minimal mileage happening. Well, up until this past week.

My original plan was to run 2 miles, at least 4-5 times a week to build up my endurance, because I couldn’t run more than 1.5 miles without stopping. That week, I ran 2 miles one day, then stopped. The next week, I ran 2 miles one day, then 1 mile the next, then stopped.
As you can see, I’ve done awful with sticking to my plan.

However this past week, I’ve done a lot. A lot more than I’ve ever done in such a short time.
Tuesday (Jun. 3rd) I ran 3.10 miles, without stopping.
Thursday (Jun. 5th) I ran 3.15 miles, without stopping, and I was able to break my 5k record from last year (~33 minutes).
Saturday (Jun. 7th) I ran 4.05 miles, not stopping, passing my previous longest run from last year, and setting a new, new 5k record for myself (30:36).

I feel behind slightly on my training for this half marathon, but if I can keep up these runs and increase my mileage, I should be able to take it with no problems.

I will loosely be following this program that I found online. Hopefully it will aid me in my endeavors. Well, that’s all for now.

Hopefully my next update will contain less slacking-off and more record-breaking. 😉

Well, as the title says, a friend has convinced me yesterday to run a half marathon with him. Honestly, I’m still a little unsure of my abilities to complete the race, but as pumped as he was to run it, it certainly made me want to begin training for it.

I haven’t run seriously since about June of 2013, literally over a year ago. And even then, the most I could run at a time was ~3.5 miles.
This half marathon is in about 5 months, so that’s all the time I have to prepare for it. I tried to get out and run this morning, 3 miles.
Let me just say, this was a terrible idea.

I was unable to complete the run, stopping at just about 1.64 miles. Everything hurt, my chest, my legs, my pride. But I wasn’t completely defeated. This was slightly expected. You can’t just take a full year off and expect to be at your previous peak. As such, it was motivating. I refuse to dwell on this failure. My initial plan was to run 3 miles every other day this week, but that’s probably not going to happen. So this week’s plan is to run at least 1.5 miles everyday, ideally 2 miles (if I have it in me). After I can get to 2 miles per day at least 5 days a week (hopefully I’ll be to this within the next 1-2 weeks *queue high expectations*), I’ll work on running 3 miles a day, every other day, with a ~4 mile run on the weekends.

I know that 13.1 miles in 5 months is a lot to ask for, but I’m so motivated for this.

Before we begin, I’d like to clear the air and address an important point in this post: this is in no way shape or form designed to convince anyone at all to stop smoking. These are literally thoughts I’ve just had about smoking, specifically cigarette smokers.

A lot of times, people want to quit smoking but don’t quit for any reason from “I can stop whenever I want” to “I’ve tried before, but it just wasn’t working for me”. While these may be valid reasons and each has their own motivation, I think it’s linked to something deeper than. I think there just isn’t enough fear of smoking hazards.

I’m sure we’ve all seen 1 or 2 “Truth” campaign commercials outlining some statistic of smoke related deaths, some gross fact about the contents of cigarettes that’s intended to make people want to think twice about smoking. While that’s fine and dandy, and probably even works on some people, most just see it, go “hmm, gross” then go about their business. Why?
“X amount of people die every year due to smoking“.
“Well, I’m still alive.”

“X, Y, and Z are terrible chemicals found in cigarettes linked to diseases A, B, and C.”
“Ehh, that’s gross and all, but I haven’t been affected by any of that.”
“But you COULD BE!”
“‘Could?’ Eh, I’ll take my chances.”

And these conversations could go on and on, probably ending with some form of “I’m not worried” or “that hasn’t happened to me”.
This, I believe, is one of the fundamental problems with trying to convince people to quit; no immediate repercussions.

Well all know about positive reinforcement, and negative reinforcement. Do something good, get rewarded. Do something bad, get punished. A pretty simple idea that pretty much drives the human race. There are psychological studies in which this conditioning has been used to train dogs, children, and other various animals. This works so well, because the repercussions are immediate. Child is bad? They get a beating. Dog is bad? He gets hit on the nose. That’s how we make connections to bad decisions; the immediate actions that follow. With smoking, you don’t feel these seconds, minutes, and days being stripped from your life. You cough a little more, your cardio health takes a hit, but all in all you’re fine. This is why I believe the amount of smokers is so high. They don’t immediately get deathly sick. There is no immediate burst of pain from smoking. Just small inconveniences.

If lives were immediately lost, I believe the number of smokers throughout the world would significantly decrease. But even that is circumstantial.

Now, let me preface the COMPLETELY HYPOTHETICAL and in NO WAY RECOMMENDED situation I am about to present; I know multiple smokers, from family to friends, and I would NEVER wish harm on any of them. Got it? Good.

Even if someone were to take it upon themselves to try to provide this immediate negative repercussion, through some kind of chemical agent slipped into cigarettes via mass production from the source, lives would be loss, and there’d just be a lawsuit against the company of those cigarette makers, and charges brought up against the one responsible. That wouldn’t be seen as effects of cigarettes, that would be seen as a “bad batch”. “An isolated incident.” Not the corporations fault, not the smokers fault. I can’t think of a single way to convince the majority of smokers to quit. Can you?

Once again, this is in no way an attempt to convince others to quit smoking, and I do not want, nor endorse, any mass harm against smokers or cigarette corporations.